Shotgunning

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Shotgunning is a means of consuming a canned beverage, especially beer, very quickly by a particular technique involving punching a hole in the side of the can.

Procedures

A college student punching a hole in a can with a knife.

To shotgun a beverage, one punches a small hole in the side of the can with a sharp object, usually near the bottom while the can is upside down. By tilting the can carefully, the puncture will go through the air-pocket in the can, keeping the drink from flying out; this is usually done using a key, bottle opener, pen, knife, or other sharp instrument. In most cases, a certain amount of beer spillage will occur. Lacking this, teeth or a strong thumb are occasionally used at some risk to the experienced shotgunner. The drinker then places this hole to their lips, tilts the can right-side-up, and pulls the tab in the usual manner. The combined effects of gravity and the pressure change that follow when the tab is pulled cause the beverage to be forced out of the can, and into the drinker's mouth, very rapidly.

Strawpedo

The method described above does not work with a glass bottle; one solution is to place a drinking straw in the bottle and bend it over the rim so that one end is running along the outside of the bottle. This way, the drinker can seal his or her mouth against the rim of the bottle and have an inflow of air allowing quick delivery. This is popularly called a "strawpedo" (a portmanteau of straw and torpedo). Strawpedoing a bottle of wine is often stated as the ultimate strawpedo test; with drinkers often having to train on smaller strawpedos before being to handle the full wine bottle.

Media

The method of shotgunning a beer is demonstrated by John Cusack and Daphne Zuniga in the 1985 film The Sure Thing. Film critic James Lipton once appeared on Late Night With Conan O'Brien to "discuss" the film, but was instead told that the staff really just wanted him to shotgun a beer on camera, a request that Lipton gladly fulfilled.^[1]

See also

• Binge drinking
• Drinking culture
• Funneling

References

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